The statements of this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
Blenders are household devices often used to blend or mix drinks or liquids. Food processors are household devices used to chop, cut, slice, and/or mix various solid foods such as vegetables, fruits, or meats. Different blade designs and rotational speeds are used in blenders and food processors in order to accomplish the mixing or cutting actions desired.
Typically, the blade attachment in conventional blenders consists of two generally U-shaped blades, a top blade and a bottom blade, joined together at a central point with their respective ends oriented in opposite directions. Because of the blender blade design, conventional blenders usually are not able to chop, slice, or cut solid foods because solid food does not flow into the U-shaped blades without the addition of a liquid. Although the solid food may make some contact with the blades, typically at least some liquid must be added in order to liquefy or cut the solid food into very small pieces. Without some liquid, blenders tend to pulverize solid foodstuffs.
Similarly, typical food processing blade arrangements are designed to generate small pieces of foodstuffs not to liquefy or mix. Even when run for long periods the geometry of typical food processing blades fails to liquefy foodstuffs due to their inability to circulate the food within the jar and to continually rotate the processed foods back through the blades to process it into ever finer sizes.
In an aspect, the present disclosure is directed to a blade arrangement suited for providing the mixing and liquefying capabilities of typical blender blade arrangements and the ice crushing, chopping, cutting, and slicing capabilities of the a food processor blade arrangement. In an aspect, the disclosure is directed to such a multi-function blade arrangement for use in small-throat blender jars.